Ginger Beef Broccoli Stir Fry

Here’s my attempt at a Gin­ger Beef & Broc­coli stir fry. I mar­i­nated the beef in soy sauce, the juice of 1/2 a lime, some Penzey’s Bangkok Blend, and a grated thumb (1 1/2 inches, appx.) of fresh gin­ger for an hour before cook­ing. I par-steamed the broc­coli in the wok before start­ing the beef, and cut some of the largest basil leaves from my lat­est Boston Organ­ics box for adding at the end. (Digres­sion– I find that treat­ing over­grown or bolted basil leaves like spinach and toss­ing them until wilted tames their pep­per­i­ness, and pre­vents me from feel­ing like I am depriv­ing starv­ing chil­dren in China of food that would go bad before it got there.) I then stir-fried the beef in my under­sized wok (note the steamed, rather than browned appear­ance of the beef) along with half a chopped, seeded jalapeno (note its miss­ing piece on the butcher’s block), and added back the broc­coli for another 3 min­utes or so, before adding the now-chopped big-ass basil. Once that had wilted, I put it in some bowls, squeezed the other half of the lime over the top, and sprin­kled with more fresh-chopped basil and some cilantro. It went well with a glass of Smok­ing Loon Pinot Noir, per­haps the pret­ti­est pinot noir in the glass I’ve ever drunk. It wasn’t, how­ever, all that I hoped it would be, though I wouldn’t throw it out of bed, either.

In ret­ro­spect, I would have:
1) used a big­ger wok, which I don’t have;
2) used more soy sauce in the mari­nade, and/or salt;
3) cooked the broc­coli until it was 80% done, instead of 50%, because I think that the extra cook­ing time killed the heat from the gin­ger and jalapeno; and
4) used more gin­ger and jalapeno anyway.